


Shame, Boatloads of Shame

by StuckyandStarWars



Category: Cyberpunk 2077 - Fandom
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, I finished this at almost 4 am last night I’m so sorry, Ok they’re not in a relationship (yet) but they are in love, i can’t stop naming my sliverv fics after avett brothers songs, just played the oil field again and needed to write down some thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-29
Updated: 2021-01-29
Packaged: 2021-03-15 13:08:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29064849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StuckyandStarWars/pseuds/StuckyandStarWars
Summary: Johnny took V’s body on a joyride, and she’s rightfully pissed about it, but apparently there is something that can fix relationships. Something Johnny never really tried.✨communication✨
Relationships: Johnny Silverhand & Female V, Johnny Silverhand/Female V
Comments: 4
Kudos: 39





	Shame, Boatloads of Shame

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, thanks for clicking this one! This isn’t a style I’m completely comfortable writing in it just seemed to fit. Some dialogue is word for word but I added a few things, I swear it’s not just copy paste from the game for 1,750 words. Enjoy!!

Johnny could feel that V was angry. She was very, very good at hiding it when she spoke, but she was pissed. She could hide almost anything from him. He had a feeling she wanted him to know.

Yeah, he’d fucked up. The guilt of that weighed heavier than her anger. In any normal situation, in any normal relationship, he’d knock back a few shots and a bottle of pills and forget about it. His whole (virtual) body ached to do that. But he was forced to watch as V snuck around a boat, wearing his dog tags- his fucking jacket. Waves of anger and betrayal still radiated off her from the day before.

Grayson was using his gun. That made him angry, and his anger was hot and red, but he was surprised that V’s anger came twofold. She was seething, a mixture of being mad at Johnny and mad at the asshole who dared to lay his hands on Johnny’s gun. She was angry when she shot him with it too. When Rouge stormed off and he told V to wait and leave her alone, her response was pointed. Like that’s what she wanted too.

She found his car after a few minutes of snooping around on the dock.

“He had something to tell me. Had something else of yours. This has to go to it.”

He was going to ask why she cared about finding whatever it was but then he saw his Porsche and all notion of question was gone. 

“Sweet ride.” He was relieved to see her smile as she slid into the driver's seat. “Can’t believe it still runs.”

“Fuck, she’s not that old. And looks like they took care of her, for what it’s worth.”

They didn’t turn on the radio. It didn’t feel right to break the quiet. 

“You sure you want to go to the oil field?” Was that concern? He couldn’t tell.

Truth be told he was scared of what they were going to find. Maybe this was a trap, made to split V up from Rouge. Smasher would be waiting for them. Fuck, no. If anyone was in danger of getting ambushed by that borg fuck it was Rouge. Grayson didn’t even know V. Or maybe it was just going to be nothing. Empty. Forgotten.

That’s exactly what it was. 

He had been trying this whole time to convince himself that the world hadn’t forgotten him. Every time one of his songs came on the radio he would think look, they’re still listening. Still hearing you, every time they passed someone in a Samurai shirt he would feel validated. He would catch glimpses of graffiti asking where’s Johnny and hear his final act of rebellion referenced here and there. But as he sat on the rusty piece of metal he knew that no one remembered. No one cared. They saw his band as another commodity, another product to show that they listened to old music and not “new age bullshit” that was more punk than they would ever be. 

She asked what he expected and he didn’t really have an answer. “I… I dunno. Something. Anything.”

She asked why he needed something, and he guessed he could understand. She was still reaching for that glory, didn’t know what it felt like. Since he’d left the war he had never been invisible. It felt like everyone knew him, for better or for worse. Johnny told her it felt like he was still in Mikoshi, all this. Like he was still violently and crushingly alone. 

V was pissed at him, yet she picked up a shard of metal and carved JS 2023 into the metal next to her. 

“Better?” It was, it really was. 

the crushing weight lifted right up until the point V called him the man who saved her life. No way she believed that. He was actively killing her, even in this moment. He barely choked out how badly he wished it was true. This was his chance, wasn’t it? When else were they going to be this close? This open with each other?

“...but I’ve managed one thing for now. Not to fuck this up, what we have.” 

Even in his apology he lied. He was just reaching for it now, begging her to tell him he was horrible. Maybe she would scream, break the chain on his dog tags and throw them into the mud, say she never wanted to see him again and down the omega blockers. At least that would be familiar territory.

“No, Johnny, you fucked that up too. You used me. Lied to me… I can’t trust you at all.” There was emotion- anger, disappointment- behind her voice, but it was steady. How did that hurt more than yelling?

They were linked. V was good at keeping her feelings repressed so he didn’t recognize them, something he recognized as practice at repressing them from herself, but they were still linked. She wanted him to be better. He could feel it. The betrayal was because she had truly trusted him. 

He cleared his throat of binary bile that was forcing its way up. “Is it too late to ask for a second chance?”

“What do you want from me?”

He explained. Explained what he had always known but had only been able to come to terms with until he was sober for days straight. How everyone he’d ever known had despised him. How they’d had every right to. How she was the only person who had ever been this close to him. 

“And yet you don’t seem to hate my living guts. At least, so it seemed… til now.”

Oh, Johnny- The thought came through loud and clear, surprised, and chalk full of sympathy. There was more to the reaction, but V shut it down quickly. 

She gave him a second chance. He didn’t even try to conceal his relief, his thanks. He didn’t say them, but he promised he’d try his best and he meant it. Meant it more than he’d meant anything in his goddamn life. 

He jumped up, energy restored, feeling better than he had in a long time. “Johnny Silverhand, relentless rockerboy who never gives up!” He gave her a playful salute too. 

“V. First among suckers.” But she smiled as she said it, and he knew she felt better too. “You were a real dickwipe at first.”

Johnny was happy for the invitation to rib her. They went back and forth with it until V brought up the people he’d let down. He listed them off, the twist in his gut after each name only being dulled by her gentle understanding. She said that he still had a chance to fix it with Rouge, but he wasn’t sure. Maybe it seemed like not that long ago he had seen her, young and leaning out of a helicopter, but it had been fifty years since then. She pointed out that Johnny couldn’t just show up, ask for help, and then never contact her again. That Smasher really seemed to have an effect on her. V was right, of course, and Johnny had an idea.

He remembered something from years ago. If he was telling the truth it was only because his Porsche was sitting not far away, and that was what had started the conversation with Rouge. A drive in. The drive in she had requested. He asked V to call, then stalled. Realized.

“Thing is you’d have to surrender control- again.”

“Yeah.” V said immediately, no hesitation. “I’ll call her.”

“Okay! Let’s delta. Nothing to see here after all.”

V asked if it was worth it, and it was Johnny’s turn not to hesitate. “Absolutely. Thanks, V. Of all the heads I coulda popped up in, hella glad it was yours.”

V turned on the radio when they got back in the car, tuning it to her favorite station and letting the quiet be washed away by waves of music. She drove the Porsche all the way back to her apartment. At this point Johnny was used to V staying up for a ridiculous amount of time- she hadn’t slept since she woke up in the motel he dumped her in- but even still he could feel exhaustion under his skin. When they arrived home she collapsed into her couch and turned on the tv like she did every night. From inside her head he could tell that she wasn’t paying attention to the beyond depressing news.

“Johnny?” She asked after a while.

He appeared in her line of sight in front of the tv. 

“I don’t hate your guts. Don’t now, didn’t then.”

Johnny knew at once, from her brain or from his own connection, that this was the end of her unfinished sentence. She was still thinking about that?

“I fucked up, V. It’s fine if you-“

“No.” V leaned forward and gripped his knee, the strange current of almost contact rippled through both of them. “You fucked up. I was pissed. I don’t want you thinkin’ I hated you for any minute of that.”

Talk about uncharted territory. He grinned, albeit uneasily. “You could never hate me.”

She let go and fell back into the couch. “Asshole. I’m being serious.”

He lit a smoke for all the good it would do and glanced over his shoulder at the tv. “Why- why do you watch this shit every night?”

“I like stayin’ up to date. Gotta, if I wanna be able to work against it.”

“You’re right, but this is just Corp bullshit.” He glitched out and reappeared next to V so he could see the tv. “I mean look at her. Happily spewing all the scop they feed her and people licking it up like dogs. All of them do it.”

“I know.” V turned it off as the news report ended and the seemingly endless stream of commercials picked up. “I can tell when what they’re saying is ridiculous propaganda.”

She stood and slid out from around the table. Before collapsing into bed she closed the metal shades on her window. The sun was starting to illuminate the sky and she needed actual sleep. Johnny felt the twinge in his back from her ridiculously uncomfortable sleeping position. He sat and waited until he felt almost completely asleep, then spoke.

“V?”

“Shuddup.”

“Thanks. For today. For all that.”

“Don’ fuck up. ‘m trustin you.”

They both passed out before Johnny had the chance to respond.


End file.
